Invisible Things

February 28, 2022
Johnson (Loving Day) delivers an alien abduction satire that reads like Gulliver’s Travels by way of The Truman Show. It opens with sociologist Nalini grimly analyzing her bro-y fellow astronauts on the SS Delany, a cryoship headed for Jupiter. A Black woman, she’s “coincidentally” assigned as assistant to the only Black man on the crew, and the two are relentlessly othered. Surveying Europa, the pair observe what appears, impossibly, to be a domed human city. Thus far, the story feels straightforward, but then the perspective switches to Chase, chauffeur to an aging billionaire. He’s convinced his wife is an alien abductee, and his conviction proves his gateway to learning that the Delany crew has been kidnapped to the domed city—and Chase’s boss is funding their rescue. The political stew the would-be rescuers drop into, and the intersecting factions that arise around them, become scaffolding for Johnson’s commentary on class, partisanship, capitalism, and things that go unsaid—“invisible things.” All too soon, Nalini’s sharp observations of the Jovian city’s culture blur into academic bloviation, and long-winded caricature becomes the book’s defining feature. Johnson is too intentional a writer for that to be accidental, but purposefulness does not equate to an enjoyable reading experience. It’s sharp, but it lacks heart. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis Agency.